A letter from chris suarez
PLEASE CLEAN YOUR WINDSHIELD
This week I made the drive from Portland to Bellingham. I left my house a little before 5am to make sure I could get to a few meetings that afternoon. On the drive up I had some great calls, listened to a few podcasts, and also drove in silence for some time. As I drove I couldn’t help but see the correlation between those 5 hours of looking through the windshield and a typical day or week running a business.
As I started my drive, it was pitch black out. I could see only as far as my headlights would reach. On top of that, it was extremely foggy, so visibility was perhaps only a few feet ahead of my car. It caused me to be extremely alert. I focused on the road immediately ahead. I knew exactly where I was at all times.
As the morning rolled on, the sun came up, and the fog rolled out. Visibility increased and so I was able to see way up ahead of my car. I began to look around and take note of what was happening in other lanes, on the side of the road, even behind me. I found myself looking in the rear view mirror more, checking out the side mirrors consistently, looking out the windows, and perhaps occasionally looking down at my phone to skip ahead or rewind the podcast I was listening to.
It struck me that our business day could easily reflect my drive. We start out focused and looking out the windshield. Before we know it, we are looking behind us, to the side of us. We start focusing on other people, what they are doing, where they are going. We allow distractions in, and when they don’t come in we actually go looking for them.
It was only when I didn’t have a choice that I found myself completely present. It allowed me to focus on what I was doing in the moment. I knew exactly where I was right then.
There will always be a lot competing for our attention. We may struggle because we feel like we need to be the visionary. We need to be looking way out ahead on the road to see what’s coming or where we want to go. We may struggle because there are things pulling our attention to the right or the left - competing priorities - and we find ourselves unsure of which way to turn. Or we may struggle because we just can’t get over what just happened, so we continue to reflect on the mistakes by looking in our rearview mirror.
There is real value in forcing ourselves to just look out the windshield. Look at what is right in front of us. Look at our current situation, our present circumstance, or where we are right now.
I decided to write a few questions down (once I stopped driving) to come back to and hold myself accountable to based on what I learned on my commute:
What is immediately in front of me, that if I focused on, could have the biggest impact on my business?
What is to the right or to the left of me, that keeps grabbing my attention, and is ultimately irrelevant to my desired destination?
What do I keep looking at in my rear view mirror that I need to get over and let go of?
I make that five hour drive from Portland to Bellingham or Bellingham to Portland quite often. WIth lessons like this one that show up on my way, I wonder why I don’t make that drive even more.